Settlements Aren't Illegal

June 7, 2001

It gets awfully tiresome reading the same phony charge repeated ad nauseam in the Sun-Sentinel as well as other media: "illegal Jewish settlements."

For more than 1,000 years, the only administration which has prohibited Jewish settlement was the Jordanian occupation administration, which during the 19 years of its rule (1948-1967) declared the sale of land to Jews a capital offense.

The provisions of the Geneva Convention regarding forced population transfer to occupied sovereign territory cannot be viewed as prohibiting the voluntary return of individuals to the towns and villages from which they, or their ancestors, had been ousted. Nor does it prohibit the movement of individuals to land that was not under the legitimate sovereignty of any state and which is not subject to private ownership. In this regard, Israeli settlements have been established only after an exhaustive investigation process, under the supervision of the Supreme Court of Israel, designed to ensure that no communities are established on private Arab land.

Repeated charges regarding the illegality of Israeli settlements must therefore be seen as politically motivated, without foundation in international law. Similarly, as Israeli settlements cannot be considered illegal, such political charges cannot justify in any way Palestinian acts of terrorism and violence against innocent Israelis.

I sympathize with and understand reporters take a physical risk offending the Palestinians when writing the truth, but I'd still like to see media stop printing and repeating bogus Arab and leftist propaganda without taking a really critical look at what they're saying.